HP Prime - worthy successor to HP-71B ?

[Garth Wilson]

(02-05-2024 06:52 PM)Sylvain Cote Wrote:  

(02-05-2024 02:36 PM)KeithB Wrote:  There is no current market for calculator based instrument control.

Of all the handheld calculators/computers that HP has produced, the 41, 71 and 75 are in a separate class.
While the 41 could be called a hybrid/transitional handheld calculator/computer, the 71 and 75 are clearly handheld computers.
They are highly customizable, have advanced IO capabilities (HP-IL) & plenty of interfaces available.
The problem is that they are slow and have limited memory when compared to today computers.

The fact that manufacturing lines are still using NI TestStand & NI LabVIEW products today, means that there was/is a market for this type of device.
Several National Instruments products are very expensive, complex and not always reliable. I am pretty sure that lots of peoples would be interested in a reasonably priced Keysight modern instant-on programmable handheld computer with advanced IO (USB-C, Ethernet, WiFi, GPIB, etc.).

(02-05-2024 02:36 PM)KeithB Wrote:  Except, maybe, for Garth. 8^)

... and me.

Admittedly, I very seldom use my 41's or 71's for instrument control anymore.  I still want to keep the option though.  The 41 (which I started with, before the 71) came along at the right time.  Laptops didn't really exist yet (and besides, they take up too much room on my messy workbench).  It was nice to be able to quickly unplug the 41 and take it from the workbench to my desk, and back, and put it in the corner of my attache case and take it home at the end of the day.  I have enjoyed working for small, low-budget companies, as that suits my personality.  The first ATE (automated test equipment) setup I did, in about 1986, used the 41 and a ten-page program.  I didn't realize how quickly the usage would escalate, and soon production people were using it all day and I hardly got to use it anymore, so I stepped up to the 71 for my own use.  At some point, the ATE control "graduated" to an HP 68000-based controller.  I went to a seminar on it, and one of the attendees asked why they didn't put something more powerful in it, like the new 68030, and the presenter answered that there'd be no benefit, because so much of the time is spent on things like waiting for readings to come back from the equipment.  And that's what I found, too.  Although the 41 was very slow, stepping up to the 68000-based computer, the speed less than doubled.  (And after that, we went to STD bus.)  The 41 was easier to program though, and in fact the HP Rocky Mountain BASIC 5.1 was quite a disappointment after I had become fluent with the 71 with the various modules and the LEX files from the Paris users' group and the 160KB additional RAM I had.